Mary Johnston - Foes

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"I had already branded you."

"Later, I saw that you had. Perhaps then I did not wonder. In
September--almost a year from that Christmas Eve--I yet did not know.
Then, in Edinburgh, I came upon Mr. Wotherspoon. He told me.... I had
no wicked intent toward Elspeth Barrow--none according to my canon,
which has been that of the natural man. We met by accident. We loved
at once and deeply. She had in her an elf queen! But at last the human
must have darkened and beset her. Had I known of those fears, those
dangers, I might have turned homeward from France and every shining
scheme...."

"Ah no, you would not--"

"... If I would not, then certainly I should have written to Jarvis
Barrow and to others, acknowledging my part--"

"Perhaps you would have done that. Perhaps not. You might have found
reasons of obligation for not doing so. 'Loved deeply'! You never
loved her deeply! You have loved nothing deeply save yourself!"

"Perhaps. Yet I think," said Ian, "that I would have done as much as
that. But Alexander Jardine, of course, would not have taken one
erring step!"

"Have you done now?"

"Yes."

Glenfernie rose to his feet. He stood against the gulf of air and his
great frame seemed enlarged, like the figure of the Brocken. He was
like his father, the old laird, but there glowed an extremer dark
anger and power. The old laird had made himself the dream-avenger of
injuries adopted, not felt at first hand. The present laird knew the
wounding, the searing. "All his life my father dreamed of grappling
with Grierson of Lagg. My Grierson of Lagg stands before me in the
guise of a false friend and lover!... What do I care for your weighing
to a scruple how much the heap of wrong falls short of the uttermost?
The dire wrong is there, to me the direst! Had I deep affection for
you once? Now you speak to me of every treacherous morass, every
_ignis fatuus_, past and present! The traveler through life does right
to drain the bogs as they arise--put it out of their power to suck
down man, woman, and child! It is not his cause alone. It is the
general cause. If there be a God, He approves. Draw your sword and let
us fight!"

They fought. The platform of rock was smooth enough for good footing.
They had no seconds, unless the shadows upon the hills and the
mountain eagles answered for such. Ian was the highly trained fencer,
adept of the sword. Glenfernie's knowledge was lesser, more casual.
But he had his bleak wrath, a passion that did not blind nor overheat,
but burned white, that set him, as it were, in a tingling, crackling
arctic air, where the shadows were sharp-edged, the nerves braced and
the will steel-tipped. They fought with determination and long--Ian
now to save his own life, Alexander for Revenge, whose man he had
become. The clash of blade against blade, the shifting of foot upon
the rock floor, made the dominant sound upon the mountain-side. The
birds stayed silent in the birch-trees. Self-service, pride, anger,
jealousy, hatred--the inner vibrations were heavy.

The sword of Ian beat down his antagonist's guard, leaped, and gave a
deep wound. Alexander's sword fell from his hand. He staggered and
vision darkened. He came to his knees, then sank upon the ground. Ian
bent over him. He felt his anger ebb. A kind of compunction seized
him. He thought, "Are you so badly hurt, Old Steadfast?"

Alexander looked at him. His lips moved. "Lo, how the wicked prosper!
But do you think that Justice will have it so?" The blood gushed; he
sank back in a swoon.

On this mountain-side, some distance below the fastness, a stone,
displaced by a human foot, rolled down the slope with a clattering
sound. The fugitive above heard it, thought, too, that he caught other
sounds. He crossed to the nook whence he had view of the way of
approach. Far down he saw the redcoats, and then, much nearer, coming
out from dwarf woods, still King George's men.

Ian caught up his belt and pistols. He sheathed his sword. "They'll
find you and save you, Glenfernie! I do not think that you will die!"
Above him sprang the height of crag, seemingly unscalable. But he had
been shown the secret, just possible stair. He mounted it. Masked by
bushes, it swung around an abutment and rose by ledge and natural
tunnel, perilous and dizzy, but the one way out to safety. At last, a
hundred feet above the old shelter, he dipped over the crag head to a
saucer-like depression walled from all redcoat view by the surmounted
rock. With a feeling of triumph he plunged through small firs and
heather, and, passing the mountain brow, took the way that should lead
him to the next glen.

CHAPTER XXII

The laird of Glenfernie, rising from the great chair by the table,
moved to the window of the room that had been his father's and
mother's, the room where both had died. He remembered the wild night
of snow and wind in which his father had left the body. Now it was
August, and the light golden upon the grass and the pilgrim cedar.
Alexander walked slowly, with a great stick under his hand. Old Bran
was dead, but a young Bran stretched himself, wagged his tail, and
looked beseechingly at the master.

"I'll let you out," said the latter, "but I am a prisoner; I cannot
let myself out!"

He moved haltingly to the door, opened it, and the dog ran forth.
Glenfernie returned to the window. "Prisoner." The word brought to his
strongly visualizing mind prisoners and prisons through all Britain
this summer--shackled prisoners, dark prisons, scaffolds.... He leaned
his head against the window-frame.

"O God that my father and my grandfather served--God of old times--of
Israel in Egypt! I think that I would release them all if I
could--_all but one! Not him!_" He looked at the cedar. "Who was he,
in truth, who planted that, perhaps for a remembrance? And he, and
all men, had and have some one deep wrong that shall not be brooked!"

He stood in a brown study until there was a tap at the door. "Come
in!"

Alice entered, bearing before her a bowl of flowers of all fair hues
and shapes. She herself was like a bright, strong, winsome flower. "To
make your room look bonny!" she said, and placed the bowl upon the
table. To do so she pushed aside the books. "What a withered,
snuff-brown lot! Won't you be glad when you are back in the keep with
all the books?"

Glenfernie, wrapped in a brown gown, came with his stick back to the
great chair before the books. "Bonny--they are bonny!" he said and
touched the flowers. "I've set a week from to-day to be dressed and
out of this and back to the keep. Another week, and I shall ride Black
Alan."

"Ah," said Alice. "You mustn't determine that you can do it all
yourself! There will be the doctor and the wound!"

Alexander took her hands and held them. "You are a fine philosopher!
Where is Strickland?"

"Helping Aunt Grizel with accounts. Do you want him?"

"When you go. But not for a long while if you will stay."

Alice regarded him with her mother's shrewdness. "Oh, Glenfernie, for
all you've traveled and are so learned, it's not me nor Mr.
Strickland, but the moon now that you're wanting! I don't know what
your moon is, but it's the moon!"

Alexander laughed. "And is not the moon a beautiful thing?"

"The books say that it is cold and almost dead, wrinkled and ashen.
But I've got to go," said Alice, "and I'll send you Mr. Strickland."

Strickland came presently. "You look much stronger this morning,
Glenfernie. I'm glad of that! Shall I read to you, or write?"

"Read, I think. My eyes dazzle still when I try. Some strong old
thing--the Plutarch there. Read the _Brutus_."

Strickland read. He thought that now Alexander listened, and that now
he had traveled afar. The minutes passed. The flowers smelled sweetly,
murmuring sounds came in the open windows. Bran scratched at the door
and was admitted. Far off, Alice's voice was heard singing. Strickland
read on. The laird of Glenfernie was not at Rome, in the Capitol, by
Pompey's statue. He walked with Elspeth Barrow the feathery green
glen.

Davie appeared in the door. "A letter, sir, come post." He brought it
to Glenfernie's outstretched hand.

"From Edinburgh--from Jamie," said the latter.

Strickland laid down his book and moved to the window. Standing there,
his eyes upon the great cedar, massive and tall as though it would
build a tower to heaven, his mind left Brutus, Caesar, and Cassius, and
played somewhat idly over the British Isles. He was recalled by an
exclamation, not loud, but so intense and fierce that it startled like
a meteor of the night. He turned. Glenfernie sat still in his great
chair, but his features were changed, his mouth working, his eyes
shooting light. Strickland advanced toward him.

"Not bad news of Jamie!"

"Not of Jamie! From Jamie." He thrust the letter under the other's
eyes. "Read--read it out!"

Strickland read aloud.

"Here is authoritative news. Ian Rullock, after lying two
months in the tolbooth, has escaped. A gaoler connived, it
is supposed, else it would seem impossible. Galbraith tells
me he would certainly have been hanged in September. It is
thought that he got to Leith and on board a ship. Three
cleared that day--for Rotterdam, for Lisbon, and Virginia."

Alexander took the letter again. "That is all of that import."
Strickland once more felt astonishment. Glenfernie's tone was quiet,
almost matter-of-fact. The blood had ebbed from his face; he sat there
collected, a great quiet on the heels of storm. It was impossible not
to admire the power that could with such swiftness exercise control.
Strickland hesitated. He wished to speak, but did not know how far he
might with wisdom. The laird forestalled him.

"Sit down! This is to be talked over, for again my course of life
alters."

Strickland took his chair. He leaned his arm upon the table, his chin
upon his hand. He did not look directly at the man opposite, but at
the bowl of flowers between them.

"When a man has had joy and lost it, what does he do?" Glenfernie's
voice was almost contemplative.

"One man one thing, and one another," said Strickland. "After his
nature."

"No. All go seeking it in the teeth of death and horror. That's
universal! Joy must be sought. But it may not wear the old face; it
may wear another."

"I suppose that true joy has one face."

"When one platonizes--perhaps! I keep to-day to earth, to the cave. Do
you know," said Alexander, "why I sit here wounded?"

"Of outward facts I do not know any more than is, I think, pretty
generally known through this countryside."

"As--?"

Strickland looked still at the bowl of flowers. "It is known, I think,
that you loved Elspeth Barrow and would have wedded her. And that,
while you were from home, the man who called himself, and was called
by you, your nearest friend, stepped before you--made love to her,
betrayed her--and left her to bear the shame.... I myself know that he
kept you in ignorance, and that, away from here, he let you still
write to him in friendship and answered in that tone.... All know that
she drowned herself because of him, and that you knew naught until you
yourself entered the Kelpie's Pool and found her body and carried her
home.... After that you left the country to find and fight Ian
Rullock. Folk know, too, that he evaded you then. You returned. Then
came this insurrection, and news that he was in Scotland with the
Pretender. You joined the King's forces. Then, after Culloden, you
found the false friend in hiding, in the mountains. The two of you
fought, and, as is often the way, the injurer seemed again to win. You
were dangerously wounded. He fled. Soldiers upon his track found you
lying in your blood. You were carried to Inverness. Dickson and I went
to you, brought you at last home. In the mean time came news that the
man you fought had been taken by the soldiers. I suppose that we have
all had visions of him, in prison, expecting to suffer with other
conspirators."

"Yes, I have had visions ... outward facts!... Do you know the inner,
northern ocean, where sleep all the wrecks?"

"As I have watched you since you were a boy, it is improbable that I
should not have some divining power. In Inverness, too, while you were
fevered, you talked and talked.... You have walked with Tragedy, felt
her net and her strong whip." Strickland lifted his eyes from the
bowl, pushed back his chair a little, and looked full at the laird of
Glenfernie. "What then? Rise, Glenfernie, and leave her behind! And if
you do not now, it will soon be hard for you to do so! Remember, too,
that I watched your father--"

"After I find Ian Rullock in Holland or Lisbon or America--"

Strickland made a movement of deep concern. "You have met and fought
this man. Do you mean so to nourish vengeance--"

"I mean so to aid and vindicate distressed Justice."

"Is it the way?"

"I think that it is the way."

Strickland was silent, seeing the uselessness. Glenfernie was one to
whom conviction must come from within. A stillness held in the room,
broken by the laird in the voice that was growing like his father's.
"Nothing lacks now but strength, and I am gaining that--will gain it
the faster now! Travel--travel!... All my travel was preparatory to
this."

"Do you mean," asked Strickland, "to kill him when you find him?"

"I like your directness. But I do not know--I do not know!... I mean
to be his following fiend. To have him ever feel me--when he turns his
head ever to see me!"

The other sighed sharply. He thought to himself, "Oh, mind, thy
abysses!"

Indeed, Glenfernie looked at this moment stronger. He folded Jamie's
letter and put it by. He drew the bowl of flowers to him and picked
forth a rose. "A week--two at most--and I shall be wholly recovered!"
His voice had fiber, decision, even a kind of cheer.

Strickland thought, "It is his fancied remedy, at which he snatches!"

Glenfernie continued: "We'll set to work to-morrow upon long
arrangements! With you to manage here, I will not be missed." Without
waiting for the morrow he took quill and paper and began to figure.

Strickland watched him. At last he said, "Will you go at once in three
ships to Holland, Portugal, and America?"

"Has the onlooker room for irony, while to me it looks so simple? I
shall ship first to the likeliest land.... In ten days--in two weeks
at most--to Edinburgh--"

Strickland left him figuring and, rising, went to the window. He saw
the great cedar, and in mind the pilgrim who planted it there. All the
pilgrims--all the crusaders--all the men in Plutarch; the long frieze
of them, the full ocean of them ... all the self-search, dressed as
search of another. "I, too, I doubt not--I, too!" Buried scenes in his
own life rose before Strickland. Behind him scratched Glenfernie's
pen, sounded Glenfernie's voice:

"I am going to see presently if I can walk as far as the keep. In two
or three days I shall ride. There are things that I shall know when I
get to Edinburgh. He would take, if he could, the ship that would land
him at the door of France."

CHAPTER XXIII

Alexander rode across the moors to the glen head. Two or three
solitary farers that he met gave him eager good day.

"Are ye getting sae weel, laird? I am glad o' that!"

"Good day, Mr. Jardine! I rejoice to see you recovered. Well, they
hung more of them yesterday!"

"Gude day, Glenfernie! It's a bonny morn, and sweet to be living!"

At noon he looked down on the Kelpie's Pool. The air was sweet and
fine, bird sounds came from the purple heather. The great blue arch of
the sky smiled; even the pool, reflecting day, seemed to have
forgotten cold and dread. But for Glenfernie a dull, cold, sick horror
overspread the place. He and Black Alan stood still upon the moor
brow. Large against the long, clean, horizon sweep, they looked the
sun-bathed, stone figures of horse and man, set there long ago,
guarding the moor, giving warning of the kelpie.

"None has been found to warn. There is none but the kelpie waits
for.... But punish--punish!"

He and Black Alan pushed on to the head of the glen. Here was Mother
Binning's cot, and here he dismounted, fastening the horse to the
ash-tree. Mother Binning was outdoors, gathering herbs in her apron.

* * * * *

She straightened herself as he stepped toward her. "Eh, laird of
Glenfernie, ye gave me a start! I thought ye came out of the ground by
the ash-tree!... Wound is healed, and life runs on to another
springtime?"

"Yes, it's another springtime.... I do not think that I believe in
scrying, Mother Binning. But I'm where I pick up all straws with which
to build me a nest! Sit down and scry for me, will you?"

"I canna scry every day, nor every noon, nor every year. What are you
wanting to see, Glenfernie?"

"Oh, just my soul's desire!"

Mother Binning turned to her door. She put down the herbs, then
brought a pan of water and set it down upon the door-step, and herself
beside it. "It helps--onything that's still and clear! Wait till the
ripple's gane, and then dinna speak to me. But gin I see onything, it
will na be sae great a thing as a soul's desire."

She sat still and he stood still, leaning against the side of her
house. Mother Binning sat with fixed gaze. Her lips moved. "There's
the white mist. It's clearing."

"Tell me if you see a ship."

"Yes, I see it...."

"Tell me if you see its port."

"Yes, I see."

"Describe it--the houses, the country, the dress and look of the
people--"

Mother Binning did so.

"That's not Holland--that would be Lisbon. Look at the ship again,
Mother. Look at the sailors. Look at the passengers if there are any.
Whom do you see?"

"Ah!" said Mother Binning. "There's a braw wrong-doer for you, sitting
drinking Spanish wine!"

"Say his name."

"It's he that once, when you were a lad, you brought alive from the
Kelpie's Pool."

"Thank you, Mother! That's what I wanted. _Scrying!_ Who gives to
whom--who gives back to whom? The underneath great I, I suppose. Left
hand giving to right--and no brand-new news! All the same, other
drifts concurring, I think that he fled by the Lisbon ship!"

Mother Binning pushed aside the pan of water and rubbed her hand
across her eyes. She took up her bundle of herbs. "Hoot, Glenfernie!
do ye think that's your soul's desire?"

Jock came limping around the house. Alexander could not now abide the
sight of this cripple who had spied, and had not shot some fashion of
arrow! He said good-by and loosed Black Alan from the ash-tree and
rode away. He would not tread the glen. His memory recoiled from it as
from some Eastern glen of serpents. He and Black Alan went over the
moors. And still it was early and he had his body strength back. He
rode to Littlefarm.

Robin Greenlaw was in the field, coat off in the gay, warm weather.
He came to Glenfernie's side, and the latter dismounted and sat with
him under a tree. Greenlaw brought a stone jug and tankard and poured
ale.

The laird drank. "That's good, Robin!" He put down the tankard. "Are
you still a poet?"

"If I was so once upon a time, I hope I am so still. At any rate, I
still make verses. And I see poems that I can never write."

"'Never'--how long a word that is!"

Greenlaw gazed at the workers in the field. "I met Mr. Strickland the
other day. He says that you will travel again."

"'Travel'--yes."

"The Jardine Arms gets it from the Edinburgh road that Ian Rullock
made a daring escape."

"He had always ingenuity and a certain sort of physical bravery."

"So has Lucifer, Milton says. But he's not Lucifer."

"No. He is weak and small."

"Well, look Glenfernie! I would not waste my soul chasing him!"

"How dead are you all! You, too, Greenlaw!"

Robin flushed. "No! I hate all that he did that is vile! If all his
escaping leads him to violent death, I shall not find it in me to
grieve! But all the same, I would not see you narrowed to the
wolf-hunter that will never make the wolf less than the wolf! I don't
know. I've always thought of you as one who would serve Wisdom and
show us her beauty--"

"To me this is now wisdom--this is now beauty. Poets may stay and
make poetry, but I go after Ian Rullock!"

"Oh, there's poetry in that, too," said Greenlaw, "because there's
nothing in which there isn't poetry! But you're choosing the kind
you're not best in, or so it seems to me."

Glenfernie rode from Littlefarm homeward. But the next day he and
Black Alan went to Black Hill. Here he saw Mr. Touris alone. That
gentleman sat with a shrunken and shriveled look.

"Eh, Glenfernie! I am glad to see that you are yourself again! Well,
my sister's son has broken prison."

"Yes, one prison."

"God knows they were all mad! But I could not wish to see him in my
dreams, hanging dark from the King's gallows!"

"From the King's gallows and for old, mad, Stewart hopes? I find,"
said Glenfernie, "that I do not wish that, either. He would have gone
for the lesser thing--and the long true, right vengeance been
delayed!"

"What is that?" asked Mr. Touris, dully.

"His wrong shall be ever in his mind, and I the painter's brush to
paint it there! Give me, O God, the power of genius!"

"Are you going to follow him and kill him?"

"I am going to follow him. At first I thought that I would kill him.
But my mind is changing as to that."

Mr. Touris sighed heavily. "I don't know what is the matter with the
world.... One does one's best, but all goes wrong. All kinds of hopes
and plans.... When I look back to when I was a young man, I
wonder.... I set myself an aim in life, to lift me and mine from
poverty. I saved for it, denied for it, was faithful. It came about
and it's ashes in my mouth! Yet I took it as a trust, and was
faithful. What does the Bible say, 'Vanity of vanities'? But I say
that the world's made wrong."

Glenfernie left him at last, wrinkled and shrunken and shriveled, cold
on a summer day, plying himself with wine, a serving-man mending the
fire upon the hearth. Alexander went to Mrs. Alison's parlor. He found
her deep chair placed in the garden without, and she herself sitting
there, a book in hand, but not read, her form very still, her eyes
upon a shaft of light that was making vivid a row of flowers. The book
dropped beside her on the grass; she rose quickly. The last time they
had met was before Culloden, before Prestonpans.

She came to him. "You're well, Alexander! Thanks be! Sit down, my
dear, sit down!" She would have made him take her chair, but he
laughed and brought one for himself from the room. "I bless my
ancestors for a physical body that will not keep wounds!"

She sank into her chair again and sat in silence, gazing at him. Her
clear eyes filled with tears, but she shook them away. At last she
spoke: "Oh, I see the other sort of wounds! Alexander! lay hold of the
nature that will make them, too, to heal!"

"Saint Alison," he answered, "look full at what went on. Now tell me
if those are wounds easy to heal. And tell me if he were not less than
a man who pocketed the injury, who said to the injurer, 'Go in
peace!'"

She looked at him mournfully. "Is it to pocket the injury? Will not
all combine--silently, silently--to teach him at last? Less than
man--man--more than man, than to-day's appearing man?... I am not
wise. For yourself and the ring of your moment you may be judging
inevitably, rightly.... But with what will you overcome--and in
overcoming what will you overcome?"

He made a gesture of impatience. "Oh, friend, once I, too, could be
metaphysical! I cannot now."

Speech failed between them. They sat with eyes upon the garden, the
old tree, the August blue sky, but perhaps they hardly saw these. At
last she turned. She had a slender, still youthful figure, an oval,
lovely, still young face. Now there was a smile upon her lips, and in
her eyes a light deep, touching, maternal.

"Go as you will, hunt him as you will, do what you will! And he,
too--Ian! Ian and his sins. Grapes in the wine-press--wheat beneath
the flail--ore in the ardent fire, and over all the clouds of wrath!
Suffering and making to suffer--sinning and making to sin.... And yet
will the dawn come, and yet will you be reconciled!"

"Not while memory holds!"

"Ah, there is so much to remember! Ian has so much and you have so
much.... When the great memory comes you will see. But not now, it is
apparent, not now! So go if you will and must, Alexander, with the net
and the spear!"

"Did he not sin?"

"Yes."

"I also sin. But my sin does not match his! God makes use of
instruments, and He shall make use of me!"

"If He 'shall,' then He shall. Let us leave talk of this. Where you go
may love and light go, too--and work it out, and work it out!"

He did not stay long in her garden. All Black Hill oppressed him now.
The dark crept in upon the light. She saw that it was so.

"He can be friends now with none. He sees in each one a partisan--his
own or Ian's." She did not detain him, but when he rose to say good-by
helped him to say it without delay.

He went, and she paced her garden, thinking of Ian who had done so
great wrong, and Alexander who cried, "My enemy!" She stayed in the
garden an hour, and then she turned and went to play piquet with the
lonely, shriveled man, her brother.

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